A woman artist once observed to Dr. Stratz, that as the final aim of a woman is to become a mother and pregnancy is thus her blossoming time, a beautiful woman ought to be most beautiful when she is pregnant. That is so, Stratz replied, if her moment of greatest physical perfection corresponds with the early months of pregnancy, for with the beginning of pregnancy metabolism is increased, the color of the skin becomes more lively and delicate, the breasts firmer.[171] Pregnancy may, indeed, often become visible soon after conception by the brighter eye, the livelier glance, resulting from greater vascular activity, though later, with the increase of strain, the face may tend to become somewhat thin and distorted. The hair, Barnes states, assumes a new vigor, even though it may have been falling out before. The temperature rises; the weight increases, even apart from the growth of the foetus. The efflorescence of pregnancy shows itself, as in the blossoming and fecundated flower, by increased pigmentation.[172] The nipples with their areolæ, and the mid-line of the belly, become darker; brown flecks (lentigo) tend to appear on the forehead, neck, arms, and body; while striæ--at first blue-red, then a brilliant white--appear on the belly and thighs, though these are scarcely normal, for they are not seen in women with very elastic skins and are rare among peasants and savages.[173] The whole carriage of the woman tends to become changed with the development of the mighty seed of man planted within her; it simulates the carriage of pride with the arched back and protruded abdomen.[174] The pregnant woman has been lifted above the level of ordinary humanity to become the casket of an inestimable jewel. It is in the blood and the circulation that the earliest of the most prominent symptoms of pregnancy are to be found. The ever increasing development of this new focus of vascular activity involves an increased vascular activity in the whole organism. This activity is present almost from the first--a few days after the impregnation of the ovum--in the breasts, and quickly becomes obvious to inspection and palpation. Before a quite passive organ, the breast now rapidly increases in activity of circulation and in size, while certain characteristic changes begin to take place around the nipples.[175] As a result of the additional work imposed upon it the heart tends to become slightly hypertrophied in order to meet the additional strain; there may be some dilatation also.[176] The recent investigations of Stengel and Stanton tend to show that the increase of the heart's work during pregnancy is less considerable than has generally been supposed, and that beyond some enlargement and dilatation of the right ventricle there is not usually any hypertrophy of the heart.